Classical World Championship 2000: Kramnik – Kasparov

Vladimir Kramnik ended Kasparov's fifteen-year reign, the longest in modern chess, without losing a single game. Using the Berlin Defence to neutralize Kasparov's favorite 1.e4, the challenger won two games and drew thirteen.

◇The challenger nobody expected

After the PCA folded, Kasparov spent years trying to organize a title defense. Talks with Shirov and then Anand fell through; in the end the company Braingames financed a match against the next-highest-rated player, Kramnik, who had once been Kasparov's own second.

Kasparov was the overwhelming favourite — world number one, rated 2849 — and few gave the calm, deeply prepared Kramnik a real chance.

◇A wall Kasparov could not breach

Kramnik's preparation was surgical. Against 1.e4 he unfurled the Berlin Defence — the “Berlin Wall” — trading into a resilient endgame that neutralised Kasparov's dynamism and denied him the sharp positions he craved. Kramnik won games two and ten and conceded nothing in return.

Kasparov failed to win a single game and lost his crown 8½–6½. To followers of the lineal title, Kramnik was now the 14th World Champion — the first to beat Kasparov in a match, and the man who took the classical line into a new century.